


Astrophobes Anonymous

by chaletian



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-25
Updated: 2010-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:12:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that McCoy hates space. Well. It sort of is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astrophobes Anonymous

It's not that McCoy hates space.

Well.

OK.

It's partly that McCoy hates space.

_("Why'd you even join Starfleet?" asks Jim one day. "Why not, I dunno, go and live in a shack on the beach and stitch up fishermen?" McCoy has no answer for that other than wanton drunkenness and poor judgement, so just shrugs and tries to study a sim of Tellarite anatomy.)_

So, McCoy doesn't like the idea being in space. He's vocal on the subject. Jim thinks it's hilarious. One day, he punches McCoy in the arm and says, "Jeez, Bones, you should just start a club!"

So McCoy starts a club.

_(Years later, when he's old and grey, he finds himself telling his daughter about it. She laughs, and says something about college kids, and he doesn't mention that he was thirty-two and had had one shot too many of bourbon.)_

McCoy is the founding member. He puts out a sign on the Academy net.

TERRIFIED OF DYING HORRIBLY IN SPACE? JOIN THE CLUB. HA. LITERALLY. HILARIOUS.

(The bourbon was still in his system.)

Cadet Callie Johnson is the second member. "I worry about the ship depressurising, slowly sucking out all the oxygen so that I suffocate," she says. She's thin and ginger and has a passion for alien flora. She fidgets with her hands and – later – is assigned to the Farragut.

McCoy realises he doesn't really have a point to the club. Should he sympathise? Attempt practical help?

The third member, another cadet called Steve, says, "It's unlikely to happen, unless you actually end up in a battle."

Callie isn't reassured, which is fair enough, because both she and Steve die in a battle in space.

_(It's takes a while, after they return to Earth, for McCoy to realise, individually, who's dead. He leans over a rail in the Academy Observatory, flask in his hand, and salutes the stars.)_

The club attracts more members. Freshmen cadets who suddenly freak out about it all. A Bolian upperclassman who crashed a flight sim and is having nightmares. Jim Kirk in a fake beard before McCoy kicks him out.

"I hate Commander Spock," says Mika Johansson, a nervous looking boy who's in his second year. "I have him for Xenomorphology."

"I heard a rumour about him and one of the other cadets," says Ektor. Her mother's Andorian. She's scared of the loneliness of space, of floating in a pod for years, never to be found, the odds always against you.

"Guess who _I_ heard a rumour about," says someone else.

And that was all it was. Gossiping, drinking, hanging out. Nothing therapeutic. Nothing useful. Just being with other people who understood how you felt.

One day McCoy says, "We should have a seminar."

Steve looks at him askance. "And do what? Bitch about our instructors and tell horror stories about life support failing?"

(Callie covers her eyes with her fidgety hands, and says, "God, don't!")

McCoy shrugs. "I just thought we might want to do something useful, 'stead of lolling around on our damn asses."

Steve shrugs too. "Whatever. I like the lolling."

"And your ass shows it," says Jenna. It descends into chaos from there, but McCoy has decided to organise a conference.

_("They still do them, you know," says Jim, when they've been to twentieth-century San Francisco to steal a couple of whales, and McCoy says, "A lot of damned nonsense!" and feels his age and remembers, for the first time in years, Callie and Steve and the others. He remembers how they died (and how Enterprise got Brian Winters, the only member McCoy actively disliked). He has another shot of bourbon.)_

FIN


End file.
